It may not seem an obvious destination this time of year, but how else would I be able to learn the true value of the Minneapolis skywalk network? Minneapolis was host to the 14th annual Association of Moving Image Archivists conference: three days of seminars, presentations, and discussions on the history of film preservation, techniques and technologies, and thoughts on the future, as well as screenings at two terrific theaters, The Riverview and The Heights.
I had to do this trip on the cheap, as I didn’t get any support from work, so in addition to my free frequent flier mile ticket, I cast myself upon the hospitality of one of my oldest friends, who lives with her husband in Minneapolis, and whom Aimee and I had stayed with two summers ago on our baseball park tour. As luck would have it, they were going to see the Pixies the night I got in, so we all headed to the RiverCentre for a fun show, although from the balcony, it was a bit more tame than the last time I saw them. Perhaps the most notable thing about the show was their unorthodox encore technique: they stopped playing, put down their instruments, and gathered at the front of the stage, smoked some cigarettes, and generally soaked in the applause as the house lights came up a bit. It was actually kind of nice; they got a break, they got to enjoy the applause, but we didn’t have to stand by as they went through the motion of going off stage, only to come back a minute later. As though in response to the Globe‘s debate on the value of the encore, they came up with a new middle ground.
The conference took up all day Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and was both informative and completely exhausting. I met some people I’d met at the previous conference I’d been to, in 2002 in Boston, and got to know others, some stars of the archive world (every world has ’em) whom I knew by reputation. I also met up with the Alaska contingent, and went out for drinks to discuss Carrs, Alaskan politics, and the upcoming 2006 AMIA Conference to be held in Anchorage. Can’t wait to be the local there.
In between sessions, I wandered the downtown, as well as the University campus, Dinkytown, Eat Street, and the maze of skybridges, skywalks, or skyways, whichever you prefer.
And yes, that is a statue of Mary Tyler Moore on the left; you’d be surprised how many grown men I saw mimic her pose for a photograph. At the Turf Club in St. Paul, the Kitty Cat Klub in Dinkytown, and the Kmart in Minneapolis, I found photobooths, two out of three of which worked. The Gehry-designed Weisman Art Museum was a sight to see, as well.
The conference gave me a lot of food for thought, and if nothing else, confirmed my desire to stay in this field, to become a film archivist, more than just someone who works in a film archive, which is what I feel like I’m doing now. It also confirmed my desire not to travel for awhile; I’ve been to Chicago, New York, Florida, and Minneapolis in the past month, and it’s time for a break.
